The main Phoenix, Arizona area-based Ewing distribution center (DC) serves branch
store operations in 200 convenient locations across the country. The company ships
1,800–2,000 cartons a day on average, operating one shift five days per week.

Unlike many industries where products are packed and shipped in boxes of
uniform size, the Ewing product line comprises everything from wheelbarrows and
50-pound bags of fertilizer to 20-foot-long sections of PVC pipe and small drip
emitters – making the order fulfillment process a complex proposition. Alongside the
varying order size and dimensions is the issue of possibly late or incorrect orders,
which aren’t just an inconvenience to the branches: The contractors – Ewing’s key
customers – will lose money, because they still have to pay their people.

The Challenge

Optimizing
the Workforce

When Ewing transitioned from paper
to handhelds, it gained a performance
boost. Even so, workers struggled with
the cumbersome nature of handhelds and
the company’s odd-sized, bulky product
mix, and management looked for a way to
optimize the individual worker experience
and increase the efficiency of their
operation overall.

The Solution

Manhattan
Associates/Vocollect Voice
Solutions Drive Fast Flexibility

When Ewing had a major technology
upgrade to Manhattan Associates’
warehouse management system (WMS),
its distribution leadership wanted to
explore additional technology options
for the picking process. Manhattan
recommended Honeywell Vocollect™
voice. Ewing management wanted to go
beyond voice just for case-picking – it
wanted to use voice for its pick-fromreserve
workflow. However, it was hard to
build a business case for that application.

“With Vocollect VoiceExpress, we were
up and running in two weeks; a traditional
modification to our WMS would have
taken much longer. This provided us with
strong flexibility for all aspects of our order
selection process,” said Tony Saurer,
Ewing Supply Chain Manager.

The company has realized a 20+ percent
improvement in both order accuracy
and productivity over scanning through
Vocollect VoiceExpress.

“In the early days of our company, it
took 12 associates working 12 hours a
day, six days a week, to service 100 of
our branches. With the solution from
Manhattan and Honeywell, the same
workers can service all 200 stores
working only five days a week. And they
typically finish the day’s order selection
efforts in seven hours, allowing us to
allocate labor to other workflows,” said
Terry Williams, Ewing’s Vice President of
Customer Experience. “This allows for
higher fill rates that will help improve our
customers’ profitability.”

In addition, voice has eliminated a number
of unnecessary extra steps required with
scanning; now workers simply speak the
license plate number. Before, they might
have to scan 20–30 individual fertilizer
labels. With Vocollect VoiceExpress, they
can multi-pick, reading off the first and last
label and doing a database query for the
in-between labels – turning 20–30 item
transactions into only one.

“With Vocollect VoiceExpress, everyone’s
smiling – our management, our
employees, our branch managers and our
contractors. Our Vocollect VoiceExpress
users certainly have adopted a ‘learn it,
love it, live it’ philosophy about the new
system – they would never want to go
back to handhelds again,” said Saurer